Ein Heldenleben - Wikipedia. Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), Op. Richard Strauss. The work was completed in 1. It was his sixth work in the genre, and exceeded any of its predecessors in its orchestral demands. Generally agreed to be autobiographical in tone, despite contradictory statements on the matter by the composer, the work contains more than thirty quotations from Strauss's earlier works. Background. He proposed to write a heroic work in the mould of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony: . Last Modified: February 7, 2016. Composed: 1898 Length: c. Although endless detail has since been provided about what is happening in every measure of Ein Heldenleben.Thanks to the healthy country air, my sketch has progressed well and I hope to finish by New Year's Day. He regarded the two as complementary, saying they were conceived as . Strauss was equivocal: he commented . The movements are titled as follows (later editions of the score may not show these titles, owing to the composer's request that they be removed). A contrasting lyrical theme first appears in high strings and winds in B major. A second motive appears, outlining a stepwise descending fourth. Trumpets sound a dominant seventh chord followed by a grand pause, the only prolonged silence throughout the entire piece. The adversaries represented by the woodwinds are Strauss's critics, such as the 1.
Viennese music critic Doktor Dehring, who is memorably written into the score with an ominous four note leitmotif played by the two tubas in parallel fifths. He wrote to Rolland, . In an extended accompanied cadenza filled with extremely detailed performance instructions by Strauss, after the fashion of an operatic recitative, the violin presents new motivic material, alternating with brief interjections in low strings, winds, and brass. During this section, the violin briefly foreshadows a theme that will appear fully later. The cadenza concludes and the new thematic material is combined in a cantabile episode commencing in G- flat. Fragments of the motives from the previous movement briefly appear. A fanfare motive in offstage trumpets, repeated onstage, is then heard. The section ends with . The three initial sections comprise an elaborate exposition, with elements of a multiple- movement symphony evident in their contrasting character and tempo. A sequence of clamorous trumpet fanfares occurs as the music approaches a harmonic climax in G flat, and the related E flat minor. Percussion is pervasive throughout the movement. A new cantabile theme makes its appearance in the trumpet, and an extended elaboration of this serves to preface the next section. The autobiographical aspect of the work is indicated most clearly in this section, in which Strauss extensively quotes his previous works. He quotes his early opera Guntram (eight times), his symphonic poems Don Quixote (five times), Don Juan (four), Death and Transfiguration (four), Macbeth (three), Also sprach Zarathustra (three) and Till Eulenspiegel (once). This is followed by a pastoral interlude with what Kennedy calls . In a final variation of the initial motive, the brass intones the last fanfare, and a serene E flat major conclusion is reached. However, it was premiered by the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester on March 3, 1. Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel of the same name. Frankfurt, with the composer conducting. One of them called the piece . The climax of everything that is ugly, cacophonous, blatant and erratic, the most perverse music I ever heard in all my life, is reached in the chapter 'The Hero's Battlefield.' The man who wrote this outrageously hideous noise, no longer deserving of the word music, is either a lunatic, or he is rapidly approaching idiocy. He admitted that posterity might well mock his response to the piece, but that although . According to Bryan Gilliam in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, this is . Ein Heldenleben treats two important subjects familiar from earlier works: the Nietzschean struggle between the individual and his outer and inner worlds, and the profundity of domestic love. Kennedy, Michael, . A Hero's Life: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project^Phillip Huscher. Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Liner notes to Philips CD 4. Gilliam, Bryan. Masterworks of the orchestral repertoire: a guide for listeners. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9. 78- 0- 8. London: Victor Gollancz. Youmans, Charles (2. The Cambridge companion to Richard Strauss. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
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